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Excel formatting saved in a database?
Hi
Our CEO has come up with an 'idea' He wants to save the formatting of a sheet and export it to a database. Then, later - retrieve this formatting data and read in data from our 4GL application so it is formatted in the desired manner (Excel already reads in the data from 4GL via an addin). This is so the users only have to push 'one button' to save their formatting and 'one button' to get it back. Now this sounded fantastically complicated as who knows what formatting they will have applied to cells/ranges/sheets and the interrogation would be excessive. So we thought we would just save a *.xls or *.xlt of the sheet with formatting and then read the file back in and save it as a binary object in the database (SQL Server or Oracle). However, I don't see that there is a way for Excel to be able to read in an XLS/XLT file and write it to a database. It just deals in TextStreams? Is this proposal just not possible with Excel and its VBA? Thanks Paul |
#2
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Excel formatting saved in a database?
You would have to query the DB (using ADO is one way) to retrieve the blob.
Reconstruct it on disk as a file. Then XL could open it. VBA can accomplish that. NickHK "Paul C" bl... Hi Our CEO has come up with an 'idea' He wants to save the formatting of a sheet and export it to a database. Then, later - retrieve this formatting data and read in data from our 4GL application so it is formatted in the desired manner (Excel already reads in the data from 4GL via an addin). This is so the users only have to push 'one button' to save their formatting and 'one button' to get it back. Now this sounded fantastically complicated as who knows what formatting they will have applied to cells/ranges/sheets and the interrogation would be excessive. So we thought we would just save a *.xls or *.xlt of the sheet with formatting and then read the file back in and save it as a binary object in the database (SQL Server or Oracle). However, I don't see that there is a way for Excel to be able to read in an XLS/XLT file and write it to a database. It just deals in TextStreams? Is this proposal just not possible with Excel and its VBA? Thanks Paul |
#3
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Excel formatting saved in a database?
If you're already reading data from the 4GL then why don't you have an
Excel Template (and empty Workbook) and keep the formatting in that? The way I see it the Template would have VBA macros that would analyze the data and add formatting, that way the number of rows returned from the 4GL can vary. As to whether it's possible. If it's a matter of saving column widths, title fonts and simple stuff, why not? Regarding the excessive iteration, you can get around the slowness by doing the formatting 50 rows at a time. Keep in mind the selection does not have to be contigous. BTW, it is absolutely possible to write the data from a Worksheet to an xml file - so later it can be transformed into XSLT. In fact, you can save the data as xml and use Excel (2003 or later) to transform and format the data. That is, Excel has some built in transformation/formatting stuff built in. |
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